She saw that they were barely sufficient for one scanty meal as she
collected them and returned slowly to the house. No words escaped her,
no tears flowed over her cheeks when she reascended the steps--hope,
fear, thought, sensation itself had been stunned within her from the
first moment when she had discovered that, in the garden as in the
house, the inexorable famine had anticipated the last chances of relief.
She entered the room, and, still holding the withered roots, advanced
mechanically to her father's side. During her absence his mental and
bodily faculties had both yielded to wearied nature--he lay in a deep,
heavy sleep.
Her mind experienced a faint relief when she saw that the fatal
necessity of confessing the futility of the hopes she had herself
awakened was spared her for a while. She knelt down by Numerian, and
gently smoothed the hair over his brow; then she drew the curtain across
the window, for she feared even that the breeze blowing through it might
arouse him.
A strange, secret satisfaction at the idea of devoting to her father
every moment of the time and every particle of the strength that might
yet be reserved for her; a ready resignation to death in dying for him--
overspread her heart, and took the place of all other aspirations and
all other thoughts.
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